This time I'm back for real.
After my posting last Tuesday reminiscing over all my vacation fun - one last souvenier presented itself - I had caught the lovely little virus that both of my little nieces had while we were there. Soon I had gone through a box full of tissues and when I wasn't blowing my nose I was trying to figure out a way to sleep... this was made more difficult by the fact that my son also caught the virus and it made him not want to nap at all (either because he had the scratchy throat symptom or because he couldn't breathe through his stuffy little nose) and anyway it was a horrible long week that after a weekend of rest (thanks to my husband for getting up with the baby so I could sleep in) and finally getting around to emptying the suitcases from the vacation - I am not really ready to blog again.
Anyway, I found this article from the NY Times a while back and bookmarked it because I thought it was pretty interesting concerning Recipes that are Deal Breakers. I love to cook and am big into using recipes - which I am pretty anal about following. And I am constantly looking for new recipes and different things to make, but of course, I have my own personal deal breakers as well. Anything that needs to be deep-fried is at the top of my list. Not just because of the horribly fattening aspect, although I do try to cook somewhat healthy at home, but mostly because I don't want to deal with having to dispose of all that used cooking oil. Another deal breaker is one that I came across when I had a subscription to Cooking Light magazine - so many of their recipes called for a ton of exotic or expensive ingredients to make one little dish - that I would automatically remove it from consideration.
This article also made me think about deal breakers in other aspects of life - and specifically in books. I know that when I am browsing in the bookstore or library there are some books that I pick up and have to read only a few sentences of the back cover copy to know that it is not for me. The one sentence that usually sends me running is: "Through three generations of one family" or "Three friends do this and that as they look for this and that" - it's always three, which I understand - three is the magic number in writing, but I just prefer to read a book that focuses on one main character's journey - not three or three generations worth. Another more recent deal breaker for me is any book that immediatly starts talking about the heroine's love of designer clothing and shoes - in fact my eyes go rolling right up into my head.
Those are my deal breakers in recipes and fiction - what are yours?
